Let's say I've got a friend (I do!) and this particular friend wants to have sex with a mentally unstable (but not dangerous) woman in a committed relationship. He persuades her to do so, and she betrays her boyfriend to have sex with this friend. This friend has no intention of an ongoing relationship with the woman - he just wants sex, and tells her so all along.

Obviously she's morally (or ethically, if you prefer) culpable for betraying a trust. Is the friend who had sex with her morally or ethically culpable for a wrong act, and if so - what?

Comments

Because Dave likes awful things? Because he can't bear to be separated from my radiant manly aura? Because I'll still talk to him after eight years?

This whole discussion sprang out of a discussion that he and I were having about a real-life situation that bears about as much resemblance to Dave's hypothetical as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic does with the abortion of a film that it spawned, but the heart of his version of the issue -- and mine -- is the question of whether or not it's wrong to be the "other man" (or woman, though I'd personally have real trouble being the other woman).

My contention that as long as 1) you're honest about your intentions and in your methods, 2) you're not friends with the cuckoldee and 3) you don't have any reason to think that your partner-in-lust is incapable of making adult decisions, you're not ethically culpable for the fact that she may or may not be betraying her partner's trust. You, after all, are not betraying anyone -- you're acting with scrupulous honesty towards all parties with whom you are interacting.

Dave's contention is that by being complicit in her unethical act, you yourself are committing an unethical act.

The comparison's a bad one, here, because Bush supporter didn't know what Bush's specific unethical acts were going to be, and they didn't have the same control over participating in them. (And some of them apparently don't judge his acts unethical...)

In this case, the person in question knows what the unethical act is, and is the pivotal in making that act happen.